For die-hard PlayStation fans, then this story isn’t new to you all. Back in the early 2010’s, PlayStation Network infamously went out for multiple days, heavily impacting many major first party releases such as Motorstorm Apocalypse and SOCOM 4.
PlayStation, when the servers came back online again, did right by the community but it was a learning experience for the company. But it seems history has repeated itself once more, with the PlayStation Network servers being offline for over fifteen hours worldwide.
Edit: 2/9/25 – PlayStation Network is working again worldwide, with PlayStation making an official comment on the matter. They state that services are restored and those affected will receive five additional days of PlayStation Plus on their accounts.
The Network Is Offline – PSN Down
Beginning sometime around 7PM EST, every sector of PlayStation Network is down. As cited by Sony’s own PSN Service Status website, you can see that the services across gaming, account access, and video content either offline completely or are experiencing issues.
PlayStation did response to this situation on Twitter/X, with the Ask PlayStation account saying they are ‘aware of the issues’ and links back to the Service Status website. Outside of this, however, no official response has been made.
Impact of PlayStation Network Being Down
With PlayStation Network being down, this impacts multiple online-only experiences. Many free-to-play experiences, including NetEase’s Marvel Rivals. The team has commented on the issue and told the community they are working on a solution.
Players also are facing issues accessing what should be offline experiences and are unable to authenticate disk drives for PlayStation 5 Pro and PlayStation 5 Slims. A similar issue happened when Xbox Live was offline for a short while in 2024, with the fix being making your console the ‘primary’ system, giving you rights to your digital content offline.
Another factor to consider are upcoming releases, with Monster Hunter Wilds having another open beta across multiple platforms. With PlayStation Network being offline, it impacts the PlayStation 5 audience interested in trying the beta. Thankfully, PlayStation players could try playing the beta again on February 13th if these issues persist throughout the weekend.
Closing Thoughts
I may not have been around during the PSN Hack of 2011, but it’s impacts had ripple effects across PlayStation. It caused first party games that should’ve been bigger success, to suffer due to online being inaccessable. And the damage was so bad, PlayStation had to offer free games to people to make up for what happened.
Most service shutdowns or issues, usually last maybe a few hours at most. But the fact this has extended past ten hours is alarming and PlayStation not properly addressing implies this might last throughout the weekend.
